The querelle on the device patented by Andrea Rossi, the E-CAT, which allegedly produces heat from nuclear fusion processes inside a small cylindrical reactor fueled with Hydrogen and Nickel powder, continues to draw the attention of the gullible as well as that of the knowledgeable. It is just entertaining to both!

Recently I mentioned here the results of an "independent" test (by G. Levi et al.) of two of the "energy catalyzers" invented by Rossi, pointing out the relevance of the claim that the authors were making. For those who can read between the lines, that does not mean of course that I believed the conclusions of the paper: rather, that I believed somebody was putting their scientific reputation at stake big time by publishing it.

Many readers of this column pointed out how the tests had been made in a very unsatisfactory way - both as far as the scientific method is concerned, and as far as the way that some of the reported measurements had been performed. I cannot repeat the issues here, but maybe just mention that if one is not allowed to look inside the black box to see what is reacting, at least one should make darn sure that one understands the input power that the electric cables are providing to the system. Anyway, let us see what the new paper says instead.

The paper by Ericsson and Pomp, who are both from Uppsala university, is quite hard on the authors of the previous "independent" study. Already in the abstract they make clear that they consider that study pseudo-scientific, and that "the circumstances and the people involved in the test make it far from being an independent one". Further, they claim that "authors seem to jump to conclusions fitting pre-conceived ideas".

The paper starts by listing features of the "independent" study which are disappointing, on general grounds. It also points out how G. Levi, the first author, had been in the past in close contact with Andrea Rossi, so he cannot really be considered an independent reviewer; other authors of the "independent" study have also collaborated with Rossi in the past. All this is well known to all who have followed the story in the recent past.

The central issue of course is how the measurements of electrical power in, and thermal power out, are performed. Here Ericsson and Pomp mention that input power from ground leads may be something that was to be monitored by has not - note, this is probably the best candidate trick to make the E-CAT appear to consume only a small part of the electrical power it receives.

A mention is also made of the fact that the testers were prevented from examining the content of the catalyzer, with the result that they certainly cannot claim that it contains hydrogen and nickel. I already made this point also from a quantitative level when I discussed the paper by Levi et al:: the determination of the amount of reactant was made by means of a ridiculous subtraction of weight before and after the removal of the latter by the Rossi team - who could have removed from the device half a kilogram of plutonium and reinserted 499.7 grams of blue cheese, as far as we know.

The report by Ericsson and Pomp then discusses in more detail each of the three tests performed in November 2012, December 2012, and March 2013, producing a long list of questions which the Levi paper does not address or specifically avoids to answer. An important note concerns the source of the "excess" heat:

"The authors half acknowledge the extremely high energy densities implied by their measurements, but do not carry the discussion to the logical end. The only processes we know of today that can give such energy densities are nuclear. This would normally be associated with strong emission of radiation, in particular, gamma, but also neutrons, beta and even some heavier charged particles (depending on the exact nuclear transformations involved). It would also cause nuclear transmutations of the fuel. In view of this background, which must have been very clear to the authors as they include several experts in nuclear physics and measurements, it is surprising that the investigations of radiation emitted during the operation of the device are not presented as part of the report [...]"

In their conclusions, Ericsson and Pomp insist on their hard-pounding the authors of the study by Levi et al., talking of "wishful thinking" and again of pseudo-science. In academic terms, this is about as bad as it gets. The next step is defenestration from one's sixth-floor office.

It would be very entertaining to expect a rebuttal of the Ericsson and Pomp criticism, perhaps in the form of a new independent study including fancy particle detectors and independent referees chosen at random and brought overnight to a secret location. Unfortunately, I doubt that the story will have other chapters to unfold. The trick is in the electric box, as several by-standers with some background in electrical engineering have already pointed out in various occasions.

It remains for me to note, as I think I also did before, that I don't believe that much harm has been done by the E-CAT to the perception of this science by the general public. When interest is raised on otherwise distant and arcane topics, we always win. As Oscar Wilde once noted, it is not important what they say about you; more important is that they talk about you! So let's keep talking about cold fusion and keep by-standers interested: with their help and support, maybe some honest version of Andrea Rossi, somebody with a truly working idea, will one day indeed come out of the woods and change our life...

Comments

Comments

Elforsk is a research consortium for electric utilities, consumers, and industrials, like EPRI is in USA.
You may call that independent, or not. Maybe saying that they have "flesh in the game", meaning that being victim of fraud will not only ruin their credibility, but also their bottom line.

That paper is so loose in it's structure that one should not base a reasonable discussion on that pamphlet.

It starts by ad hominem attacks, which is maybe more acceptable for a conspiracy site, than for a scientific papers.
That point have been highly criticized and a scientific misconduct by the scientists.
Then they add fuzzy critics, without precise substance (and much mistakes)... Muddying the water some say.

Clearly the critics don't understand what is a blackbox test, and it is right that they don't know whether it is nickel of fairy dust (I concede, that after seeing it work, they assumed the industrialist did not use black magic or alien technology).
What is sure is that it produce heat, and that the commentators are quite incompetent or dishonest in thermography. Moreover on many points they seems not the have read the report, and have concluded straight from ignorance.

there are answers by the test team, which I let you find... (you may dare to find them on lenr-forum).

The only point that can be considered is that the DC offset of the input voltage was not measured.
Since they rewired the devices and reinstalled the probes themselves, since they checked the hidden wires , they clearly were allowed to install a cheap DC voltmeter, and more...
Andrea Rossi could not guess, and bet his survival on , that they forget the DC offset...
You don't use a trick if you are not sure the spectator can't see it.
There was no alternative way to feed more energy without that trick, thus he could not count on it.

The next test should address that detail, but for anyone having some competence in game theory, business, the story is finished. there was no DC, thus anomalous heat, thus a revolution...

The only escape is (and it is clearly the prefered option) to assume a great international conspiracy theory.
Given the thousands of various participants , of various nationalities, organizations, motivation, kind of funding, competences... It is sure an alien conspiracy, involving NSA, KGB, DGSE, MI5,....

Ericsson And Pomp will rue they day that they wrote that "rebuttal". I continue to be astonished by people who claim to be "Scientist" who don't their due diligence on subjects they claim to be experts on. In the light of history these people will be seen for what they are, at best ignoramuses, at worst raving idiots.

Alain, so many errors in such a small message! The Swedish scientists who wrote the original paper did a TERRIBLE job. In the past, Rossi cheated with bad enthalpy measurement at the output of his device and none of the testers ever insisted on a calibration of that measurement. Now, Rossi probably cheated with the input power. Contrary to your assertion, the experimenters did not rewire anything. They dealt with a literal rat's nest of wiring provided entirely by Rossi and with instruments provided by Levi, a Rossi friend or colleague. The tests took place in Rossi's lab using his mains power source.

The three phase source, which was not needed to provide a measly 350 watts of input power, was defective. One phase appeared dead. But if instead of being dead, it had been improperly connected with a hidden double conductor, that alone would account for the supposed power gain the experimenters reported. They should have simply cut that "dead" wire. They didn't. They had no idea what they were doing. Nuclear physicists are not the right people to make these type of measurements. The team needed a good electrical engineer with lots of practical experience and they also needed someone expert at detecting sleight of hand tricks, which Rossi almost certainly uses in every one of his experiments.

If you believe Rossi, you need to explain why he has fumbled uselessly with what would be the greatest discovery of the century for more than two years. You have to explain why he has not had his earlier tests repeated with attention to correcting all the errors people have found in them. Tell us why Rossi deals with magnetic motor and free energy crooks (Schneider) to sell his invention. Why are shares sold for a pittance by a weird guy in Australia (Roger Green) when they are worth billions? Why does Rossi lie about his association with large companies like National Instruments and Siemens, both of which denied working with him? Why has Rossi never shown any part of his supposed million unit/year factory in the US? Why did he tell a Florida nuclear inspector that there was no such a factory? That he made nothing nuclear in the US?

Why has Rossi claimed sales of his megawatt plant but has never revealed a single customer's identity?

Nothing about Rossi's claims make sense. If he really had the greatest invention of the century, it would not be developed and tested the way Rossi does. What Rossi does is like a classical investor scam. For example it's like Steorn, Dennis Lee, and Carl Tilley (look them up).

Cower all ye seers .. Mary Yugo is all powerful .. Writes so clearly, so proud of his work. Such wonderful integrity. Values and Insights you can only marvel at.. I salute you Mary Yugo, you are without any doubt whatsoever, the ultimate prognosticator. The King of all knowledge.. Given your stature and your knowledge. One can't help wondering. Why dost thou hide in that filthy sewer?

You must have your reasons :) I will trust you Mary.. with all that is dear to me I will trust you !

First they rewired, re read the interview of one of the testers. You have problem with facts that disagree with you, like the authors of the pamphlet.
Like the autho you assume that if they did not write they rewired, then they sure did not... but bad news they did.

Second Rossi did not make enthalpy error, you SUSPECT he did enthalpy error... neither proven nor disproven I agree.

This experiment just tried to follow the moving target of your hyperskepticism. And as expected it does not satisfy you... nothing can... he delivered the tea kettle, flow calorimetry, mass calorimetry, thermography calorimetry... and you always moan... anyway at last this test, beside the DC being forgotten.

You behave exactly like a condemned in death raw, making desperate appeal on any point, just to delay the sentence.

the 2 phase used over 3 phase is simply logic if it is an industrial component designed to be installed into a bigger assembling, with 3 balanced phase. More that fraud (it does not help fraud, 2 wires are enough and easier) it shows that it is an industrial element.
The reason why it is 380V in triangle, is probably that it reduce current a little, thus copper and problems.

I agree that Rossi have few reason to show his discovery until it can be sold. Maybe it can be sold soon.
Another reason is to call investors, but demo are to be done in private. That is what Aldo Proia (ex-executive of Energaya, now Prometeon) reports himself in interviews.
Other reason to communicate is linked to you own ego, to please a friend who will die soon...

It is probably why, Defkalion after communicating naively, decided to get nearly silent, despite visible enthusiasm and desire to prove their success... Maybe also they realised that people who could be convinced, were already, and other will only change mind when the product is sold to their neighbor.

Entrepreneur are not so rational, otherwise they will work of a public institution.
Entrepreneur is not a job, but a psychiatric profile (BFM business - Les Experts).

people who don't want to miss the revolution of the century should not hear the conspiracy experts, but get the data from all sides...
Too bad the recent data criticizing that pamphlet was not used to judge of the situation.

You don't need a MsC to see how loose and desperate MY & clone are, facing todays evidences.
MY is grey-blind, like many pretended rationalist. After decades in corporate life, I live in the real grey world and don't imagine that I did not get thousands of page of information before having an intimate position, and a thousands more before making it public.

"First they rewired, re read the interview of one of the testers. You have problem with facts that disagree with you, like the authors of the pamphlet. Like the autho you assume that if they did not write they rewired, then they sure did not... but bad news they did."
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No they did not. At best, they disconnected the existing wires, checked for extra wires, and reconnected them. Nothing in any write up says they brought their own wires. I defy you to find such a statement anywhere credible. Or from the original authors.

"Second Rossi did not make enthalpy error, you SUSPECT he did enthalpy error... neither proven nor disproven I agree."
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What I know for a fact is that Rossi (and Levi) consistently refused to run a blank cell (no hydrogen) to calibrate the output measurement system. They gave idiotic excuses for it or did not respond to inquiries-- Levi, for example, did not respond (at all) to a direct email question about this from Nobel laureate Brian Josephson. I have a personal email from Josephson verifying this and if you doubt it, you can email him directly for verification.

The only likely reason for refusing to calibrate the enthalpy measurement is that it was fraudulent and the device was nothing but an electrical heater.

In the present test being discussed (the so-called hot cat), it appears that the output end was calibrated. However, most likely Rossi chose the INPUT end (which he completely controlled) to cheat. The experimenters failed to use an oscilloscope, a DC meter and a spectrum analyzer to rule out cheating at the INPUT end. The three phase power supply had a dead phase for no apparent reason and it remained connected. Obviously, the experimenters had no idea how to insure proper power measurements if fraud was suspected. None at all.

"the 2 phase used over 3 phase is simply logic if it is an industrial component designed to be installed into a bigger assembling, with 3 balanced phase. More that fraud (it does not help fraud, 2 wires are enough and easier) it shows that it is an industrial element. The reason why it is 380V in triangle, is probably that it reduce current a little, thus copper and problems."

Rubbish. The device supposedly drew 350 watts. There is no need for three phase current for this test and it complicates and obfuscates everything as you can see from the resulting arguments about the dead phase (which you did not address).

"It is probably why, Defkalion after communicating naively, decided to get nearly silent, despite visible enthusiasm and desire to prove their success... Maybe also they realised that people who could be convinced, were already, and other will only change mind when the product is sold to their neighbor."
-
Again complete nonsense. Defkalion ran a discussion forum on which their claims, two years ago, of having table top 25 kW reactors based on nuclear fission, were questioned. They not only stopped the forum, they deleted it completely. Do honest people behave that way? Defkalion wrote that seven famous companies tested their product last April and they would release the results. They have never named a single company or released any data at all. All they did was make extravagant claims at a meeting, claims they did not back up with any valid or confirmed information whatever. Every bit of evidence about Defkalion's history suggests they are nothing but an investor scam. They call Rossi a liar and he returns the compliment. I suspect in this respect, both are right.

All skeptics ask for is a truly independent test, preferably of the much simpler and easier to test older steam temperature ecats. Independent means done by a major university department or national laboratory in their facility, with their methods and their instruments. Rossi or his representatives could only be involved to insure proper operation and safety as well as security of intellectual property. They could not choose or provide any instruments or methods or input power. That would be convincing. Any tests involving Rossi, his lab, his associates, his methods, (and most likely his instruments or identical ones) have no meaning whatsoever. There are myriads of ways for Rossi to cheat, With his background, his obvious lies and contradictions on his blog, and his failure to reveal a single customer for things he claims to have sold since 2011, nothing about the ecat is believable.

All he needs to do to satisfy me, and I suspect almost everyone who doubts his claim, is to hook it up to a heat engine and have it power itself, while still giving out usable electricity to power a heater or something. Do that for several days from a small unit (why not make it portable too? Run it from a truck with the engine off) and I guarantee the investors will come charging. That's only a very small step from what he has already 'demonstrated'.

If that's too hard then an alternative would be to power it from a normal portable generator (diesel or petrol), and do the same experiment with a known quantity of fuel, once with just a heating element and once with the special gear. See which can boil the most weight of water to remove any doubt about the overly complicated and error-prone thermal setup. Very easy to do, cheaper in fact than the past experiment.

This test can be applied to any 'generator', be it one of those doubtful magnet ones, or whatever the latest designs might be.

Any generator worthy of the title needs to be able to operate not connected to the grid.

You're too easy to please. Any test involving Rossi is suspicious. Magicians have innumerable ways to provide their illusions. Any valid test must be done completely independent of Rossi's lab, his power sources, his measurement methods, his instruments, and most of all, his friends and previous associates.

Several leading skeptics have stated that cold fusion proves the experimental method itself does not work. In other words, when dozens or hundreds of laboratories report they have replicated a phenomenon, they might all be wrong, and the only way to be sure a finding is correct is to show that it conforms to established theory. [Close, Huizenga ibid.] [6]

A variation of this idea was expressed by R. Ballinger (MIT) and B. Kevles (Yale). They say that Fleischmann and Pons were definitely wrong, but those who later replicated them may be right. Ballinger wrote:

"It would not matter to me if a thousand other investigations were to subsequently perform experiments that see excess heat. These results may all be correct, but it would be an insult to these investigators to connect them with Pons and Fleischmann. . . . Putting the 'Cold Fusion' issue on the same page with Wien, Rayleigh-Jeans, Davison Germer, Einstein, and Planck is analogous to comparing a Dick Tracy comic book story with the Bible." [7]

Kevles [8] accused Fleischmann and Pons of misconduct (fraud) and "scientific misdeeds,", and she said that the later replications of their work prove nothing to the contrary: [9]

"Eventually, [Fleischmann and Pons] particular claims were refuted as theoretically unfounded and without experimental support. This is the incident I referred to in my article and it has altogether nothing to do with research since in this field." [10]

Of course they would deny any connection to the original Pons & Fleischmann experiment (in which P & F invested $90,000 of their own money, so it wasn't just cooked up as a joke or something.)

And the reason for the denial of is because heads would have rolled had the dots been connected. And many of these heads were still working at cushy jobs so paychecks would have been destroyed along with lofty careers.

Still, the one thing that stuck out more than anything in that sorry display of government arrogance was what Pons and Fleischmann though as the most surprising thing about all the other efforts to replicate their results--and that was the fact that nobody ever called to ask them any details about their experiment. And that's particularly telling since the government wanted results in TWO weeks but P & F could have told 'em it always took FOUR weeks to load the Pd cathode with heavy water.

Epic fail by our hasty government and poor replication was to be expected. And it was these researchers that did shoddy work, not Pons and Fleischmann.

A very simple hoax method exists to fool the clamp-on ammeter, and that is to run both power and return in a single sheathed cable. The third phase of what was provided from the wall socket in Rossi's lab, where the tests were conducted, appeared to be "dead". This in itself is suspicious, but once one realises that this was used for the "cable trick", all becomes clear. Excess power can be pumped into the load undetectably.

Your hypothesis of coaxial cable have been studied.
since the plug, sockets have been observed, and most of all COULD BE OBSERVED, it is impossible...

moreover coaxial cable need either high current or high voltage in a small wire, with all being invisible...
and even if it is hard to hid from inspection, it is even harder to be sure nobody can see it with close inspection...

one again use more EQ and less IQ. more engineering knowledge and less hypothesis.
Game theory is a good starting, but real life is more efficient to teach the grey world.

as I said the discussion have been done on each hypthesis. DC is the only that hold, and does not survive the game theory test...

anything that could be detected by allowed action, cannot be used.
Would Essen and kullander have used wooden wattmeter, there is no doubt you could rule out fraud. because they could have used real wattmeter.
I imagine you cannot understand that argument, this is why I advise you not to talk of subject you cannot understand.

NB: I imagine that in fact you are able to understand to that reasoning, provided it match your prejudice...
There are books on game theory, and other puzzles about beliefs and deduction...

@AlainCo
The only trouble with what you write is that, because you are a True Believer (Vortex list), you have chiefly ad hominem remarks to make. You practice thinking so biassed that it is a huge stretch to call it scientific or logical. The rambling tone of your post is almost humourous.

What we have in Levi et al's report is as Ericsson & Pomp's critique describes - a sloppy paper with much detail omitted. Nowhere in that report is an examination of the cable described, nor the protocol for so doing. So no, you do not know, and neither do I, whether or not there were two wires on that 3rd phase. Since I wouldn't trust Rossi as far as I could throw him, I'd say there's a good chance there were two. You of course cannot imagine that. And did I mention coaxial cable? - I did not.

The fact that you do not find a "dead" 3rd phase suspicious speaks volumes.
And in this context, I'll take electrical engineering over your game theory any day.

The behavior of the Internet community is repulsive in all details. People who know nothing are free to run their fingers over the keyboard making completely anonymous attacks. The cause of civilization is infinitely hampered by such intellectual parasites.

What is funny - eventually the reality of LENR will be acknowledged by the mainstream academic circles, and then the skeptics will suddenly all pretend to have agreed all along. They will not even have to courage to admit that they were wrong. And they will resume their anonymous attacks along some other lines, with new victims.

Levi and his colleagues are distinguished professors with long CVs. Who are you? Simply an anonymous Intermouth, a know-nothing with an attitude.

If one finds a post containing no content and lots of ad hominem, it's likely that it's from a True Believer. As did this little thing you dropped on the floor just now. I have a physics degree from Oxford University, UK. I gained my place at age 16. That means that I have certain qualities that many lack. Make no assumptions about the acumen of your critics.

Well I am a published physics author who uses my actual name. I was also 16 and advanced, a very very long time ago. In other words, your credentials do not impress me. I trust Levi and his gang of instrumentation specialists, thanks.

1. A lack of intuition which would be entirely natural for an Electrical/Electronic Engineer. Since I've practised that professionally for over 40 years, I feel qualified to speak to that.

2. An attitude that did not take on fraud as a possibility in any serious way. Look at their awful calibration protocol. It was a joke. The only indication that they seriously checked for fraud is that they lifted up the control box (aka Bamboozle Box, which they were not allowed to open) and determined that no extra wires lead into it. And they only deigned to share this information in a later-published Appendix to their parlous paper.

Had they been allowed to open the Bamboozle Box, a 2-wire input on that 3rd phase would have been clear as day. At least, it would have been to a qualified electronic engineer. Unfortunately, their team consisted of a pal of Rossi's, an X-Ray chick, a bunch of nuclear scientists, and various hangers-on. No EE's.

Wel, hey--since you're so qualified and so outspoken, call up Rossi and volunteer to do another "independent test", and let's see what you find. EE's rule the world, you know!

There's no guarantee that someone other than an Electrical/Electronic Engineer has a "lack of intuition", so that's an ad hom right there.

And I seriously doubt a bunch of highly-trained professionals would go into a test like they did and fail to "take on fraud as a possibility in any serious way".

Again, you are saying you can read their throught processes, which you can't, and the very nature of the test on this subject, which has stirred a considerable amount of controversy (you being part) is to check for that very thing--the possibility of fraud.

You call it "the Bamboozle Box", but what you really want is to know the catalyst Rossi uses. From the outset, the researchers said It is what's known as a "Black Box" test, meaning the testers don't know what's inside it, and I'm happy they did just that because it's got you in such a huge lather that you apparently feel threatened.

Don't worry; be happy. What it is will be revealed in time.

If you were right, congratulations; if you were wrong--here, have some crow along with marryugo.

You don't appear to be very bright. When a fraud mechanism, fairly obvious to an EE, is described you in detail and is followed by a statement that the team displayed incompetence in checking for fraud, the best you can do with that information is to make guesses about my emotional state.

How long have you been a member of that knitting circle? I hear the old gals natter on happily all day - just as, apparently, do you.

This is not about gossip - this is about possible fraud, and is a rather more serious matter than guesses about my emotional state. Here's another one for the record:

Twin thermocouples should have been affixed to both the core and to the middle cylinder where the heating elements reside. My thesis is that the heater is hotter than the core, because the core consists of nothing more significant than sintered hamburger meat. It will be heated radiatively, but the heater itself will be hotter.

By the way - the vortex list is equal parts fantasy and fact - that is its charm. There, one breathes in the clear mountain air of open discussion, as opposed to suffocating in the stifling atmosphere of pathological skepticism and ignorance which characterizes the fetid lowland of groupthinkers.

I'm sure Tommaso, that you have read nothing about this subject, and are simply parroting what is said by most everyone. The real spirit of science has gone missing. But the report of Levi et. al. is confirmatory because of the very simplicity of the set-up. That of Pomp and Circumstance is simply an ad hominem, irrational attack without any value - well that's not quite true - if that's all the skeptics can produce, then they have already lost.

In an age when string theory, multiverses, eternal inflation, dark energy, WIMPS, superpartners, and all other manner of nonsense have utterly corrupted the culture of science, this new thing arose and was not only ignored, its discoverers were hounded out of their careers. There will be much to answer for.

LENR is real. No one has any idea how it works. Then again, no one has any idea why neutrinos are all left-handed do they?

It is very simple. It's an infrared camera with a thermocouple for verification. They tracked to within 2 deg C of each other. The only complex thing is use of the Stefan-Boltzmann law. The equipment is off-the-shelf and not specialized. 300W in produced 900W out. Don't feed the maryyugo troll.

The only possible avenue of fraud was DC current offset by some unknown means (they used a wall plug with normal wires). That is ruled out by common sense.

It is very simple. It's an infrared camera with a thermocouple for verification.

The real problem there is that they never measured the temperature of the E-Cat. They only measured the temperature of the outside of the tube furnace containing the E-Cat. There is no way to actually measure how much heat, if any was actually being generated by the E-Cat. It is entirely possible that all of the power coming from the "experiment" was being generated by the electric heating coils surrounding the hidden E-Cat.

The only possible avenue of fraud was DC current offset by some unknown means (they used a wall plug with normal wires). That is ruled out by common sense.

Nonsense.

Rossi claimed to be using "normal" 3-phase power, but according to the report, he was not. He was apparently using only 2 of the 3 phases (phase 3 appears "dead").

Unfortunately, he left the supposedly "dead" wire connected between the power supply and the E-Cat controller throughout the testing. Neither he nor the testers ever explained why there was an "extra", supposedly "dead" wire connected to the power supply the entire time.

As mentioned above, there is a simple trick that would allow any amount of electric power to pass through that "extra" wire without being detected by the equipment being used by the testers. If that "extra" wire was carrying the same amount of power as the other "hot" wires, it would provide exactly the amount of power needed to produce the claimed results. Note that this "wiring trick" does not require anything as esoteric as D/C power. It only requires the standard A/C power available from the wall outlet.

Note that at least in the December test, the testers could not have removed and replaced the wires, since the E-Cat was already running when the testers arrived. Note that they were able to use the exact same testing protocol on the December test as the March test, so it is not at all clear that they actually did anything to the power lines (where the likely trick would be hidden) in March when they couldn't have done so in December.

Take it somewhere else dude - I'm a physicist myself and am quite capable of judging the reality of this. I have no interest in arguing with you or any other pathoskeptic - you are better ignored at this stage. Good luck.

please learn electricity befor talking of 3 phase...
when you design power electric device you will understand ...
in high power installation based on monophase elements like the hotcat, you typically use triangle (or Y) coupling... and each element is monophase...

any power meter can precisely measure unbalanced tri-phase. that is his job. moreover you ask of 500% error... not 1%.

please don't try to muddy the water and fool the incompetents, as usual.

NB: I've already explained that. many other critics are answered in the report or in following interviews. It seems that about LENR illiteracy is a problem. or is it selective memory ? as Roland Benabou says in his "Groupthink..." papers.

The report states that the resistive heating elements in the tube furnace were wired in a "Y" coupling, as you state, and that requires full, 3-phase power to work properly. So far, so good.

However, the appendix to the report clearly states only two of the three phases showed power usage. This is inconsistent with the claim of a "Y" wired heating element. It also leaves an attached wire that appeared to be "dead".

The so-called "cheese" videos clearly demonstrate that such an apparently "dead" wire can carry full current without being detected by the "clamp-on" ammeter used by the testers.

So, instead of supplying power on only 2 phases for 33% of the time (as claimed in the report), it would have been trivial to supply 3 phases for 33% plus 1 phase for 67%. In an unlikely coincidence, this is would provide exactly the claimed "excess" power (COP = 2.5).

Perhaps you don't have a problem with a "hidden" E-Cat, and only measuring the power being dissipated by the furnace, and having an "extra", "dead" wire from the power supply to the device, with the claimed output being exactly what the simplest fraud scenario would produce.

I doubt that anyone who wasn't already a "True Believer" would accept those problems with the tests and the reports.

That's exactly right, John. To convert a 2.5 COP into a mundane 1.0 COP, the ratio of actual input power to measured input power needs to be 2.5 - i.e. needs to be the COP itself. Let x be the per-phase power, and assume that this is also present on the "dead" phase, but using Cheese Power wiring. Then measured input power = 2x/3 and actual input power = 2x/3 + x = 5x/3. The ratio is 2.5, as required, and so the actual COP is 1.0, as expected.

Note that, while the pulsing protocol from the Bamboozle Box was active, measurements of both voltage and current were forbidden on the wires connecting the BB to the load. I have always assumed that this is how the excess power was smuggled in - during the so called "off" periods of the cycle, which is for 67% of the time.

Unfortunately, a problem with your calculation is that the socket voltage was measured at 6 volts, not 230 volts or whatever it should have been. Therefore, I've always thought that this "dead"phase was accorded special treatment, to provide the excess power at higher current.

Unfortunately, a problem with your calculation is that the socket voltage was measured at 6 volts, not 230 volts or whatever it should have been

I believe you are referring to a photo of the ammeter taken by someone other than the testers during the tests.

The actual report (actually, the appendix) claims that the voltage on the 3rd phase wire was normal, but the current flow was zero.

These two items both show that there was something wrong with the 3rd-phase wire during the test. And since the output measurements were based on assuming that the input power was correctly being measured, it discredits the output measurements.

Next time, they need to cut any "extra" wires. They also need to put some thermocouples on both the E-Cat and the inside of the furnace. If the E-Cat is really generating the claimed "excess" power, it would necessarily have to get much hotter than the furnace. With the setup from the report, there was no way to determine if this was happening.

Excellent. If nothing else, this points up the sloppiness of the report - one of a host of different examples one could cite, splendidly catalogued by E&P.
Normal voltage on 3rd phase: CHECK. Completely explains a measured COP of 2.5 on a COP 1.0 system.
Thermocouple checks on E-Cat: CHECK: The E-Cat is providing ZERO extra power of its own is our thesis here.

Is anyone still in any doubt as to the heinous quality of this report, and the utter incompetence of this team to ferret out possible fraud?

Current flowing through a wire that has a clamp-on ammeter (just what the testers used) showing no current flow.

Measurements of Voltage, Current and Frequency on the rigged wiring, without exposing the trick.

A normal-looking electrical plug, plugged in to a normal extension cord,

In other words, these videos demonstrate all the things the "True Believers claim to have been "excluded".

The fact is, nothing in the report or appendix refute the simple wiring trick (as demonstrated in the videos).

The fact is, the E-Cat (actually, the electric furnace surrounding the E-Cat) had an "extra" wire of unknown purpose connecting the E-Cat controller and the wall outlet throughout the tests that was capable of carrying all of the "excess" power reported. In fact, that 3-rd phase that was supposedly "dead" would, by default, carry exactly the amount of power that the report claims to have found (COP =2.5).

Regardless of whether Rossi used that particular wiring trick, the simple fact that such a trick fits in with all the observations is enough to discount the report.

Since this place is frequented by real scientists, given that Tomasso is an awesome scientist himself and almost always posts interesting things including reports of his own work, I want to point out that "maryyugo" is an infamous, and indefatigable, anti-Rossi troll. How any one person finds so much time to attack one person is remarkable. If only THAT energy could be contained!

She's the classic sophist - cannot win arguments, so just keeps them going until the opponents are exhausted. She knows no science and can be safely ignored. A troll can only exist if fed. Don't feed this one.

The point is not how Rossi might have fixed the results, what matters is that he had opportunity to do so. A proper independent test cannot be carried out in his lab.

Rossi doesn't yet have a real patent. The one granted doesn't include enough information for someone to build an ecat so is for all intents it's unenforceable. His US patent application is similarly content free and is very unlikely to be granted. The whole point of the patent system is you get protection in return for disclosure.

It is funny that you are able to mimic the real reasoning, but in the reverse way.

whatever can Rossi do, if the testers could have checked some details, like wiring, DC offset, HF spectrum at the input, ... he could not base his survival in assuming the testers don't check that detail...

whatever Rossi is, if the testers are free enough, and they were enough to do a black-box test (many critics are based on people not understanding what is a black-box test).

Even Houdini could not fool testers that are free to unplug, reinstall instruments, add instruments, touch reactor, move boxes...
Magician tricks are based on controlling what the spectators do and see.

anyway it is impossible to convince conspiracy fan like MY and millstone... I could observe that on many subjects.

"The point is not how Rossi might have fixed the results, what matters is that he had opportunity to do so. A proper independent test cannot be carried out in his lab."

Exactly. Due to the sloppiness of the report and bearing in mind Rossi's criminal history, in which deception has repeatedly been the chief component, is it more likely that everything in fact was above board? Common sense dictates that the answer should be "No".

maybe some question will be answered.
No hope to convince.
Remember the number of years between the first public flight of the Wright Brothers (with no way to imagine fraud), and the time SciAm accepted the facts... less than a decade I admit.

Remember the number of years between the first public flight of the Wright Brothers (with no way to imagine fraud), and the time SciAm accepted the facts... less than a decade I admit.

But also remember John Worrell Keely, who ran a fraud very similar to Rossi's for decades (until he died). Like Rossi, he only allowed tests in his own facilities (which were later found to be full of gimmicks to fake the results) and he never allowed a proper, independent test.

In spite of the obvious problems with his claims and demos, he managed to fool several credible "experts", along with many investors (he had a publicly-traded company).

ah ah so desperate you just cite criminal, because there are no other arguments...
Ther are bad mothers... this is not an excuse to accuse any mother of crime...

who care if Rossi is a criminal, a fraudster... he could not take the risk to allow a test where the only allowed trick could be detected with a grandpa DC voltmeter...

hyperskeptics are cornered.
ann to that that Rossi is the 3rd company to have 3rd party Kw scale tests...
with various replication...

only solution is to muddy the water, use strawman arguments, confuse with unrelated pseudo-science...

People who want to see real science, should follow the engineers at NIWeek2013 where national Instruments will show you what is science. Try also at Uni Missouri... Robert Duncan was mainstream before he sadly discover that Energetics Technology claims he was supposed to debunk for CNBC 60minutes ... were real...
since then he is a fringe university boss that host ICCF18...
what a shame... like Celani, Dawn Dominguez, and so many ex-lead electrochemist...

Cold fusion is fringe because all scientific who support it are fringe.
This is why as soon as a scientific support/accept LENR he is labelled as fringe...
Do you label Naturwissenschaften as a Fringe science journal ? sure, they have a LENR editor to organize peer-review of LENR papers.

Since Rossi is a convicted criminal, I guess we're both citing criminals.

And, note that in spite of all of the gnashing of teeth, there is no publicly-available information that Rossi was ever exonerated of the worst of the convictions: the 2000 conviction for aggravated fraud, which resulted in an 8-year prison sentence.

The only "evidence" ever presented by the "True Believers" is Rossi's claims on his vanity web site. In other words, we're just suppose to believe Rossi, without any actual evidence that his criminal convictions were overturned.

Again, not good enough for anyone who isn't already a "True Believer".

he have been innocented because it was a retroactive law, that is all.
It took time to be accepted, because... you know who is managing waste in Italy?
Of course you are aware of all of that and you try to fool the innocent readers here.
it seems you cannot accept facts, not even decision of justice.

his petrodragon patents was sold, and the patent is used today by US companies to synthesize fuel.
Many accusations are simply shortcut from doubt to certainty.
typical of conspiracy fan.

anyway even if he was a bandit, a bandit cannot change the fact that a grandpa voltmeter can detect DC, that modern wattmeter can measure any power transmitted on 4 wires, whatever is the wiring after the wattmeter, that estimating thermal power emitted with thermocouple and IR cam can be easily made better than 200% error.

it start to be ridiculous...

You are insulting 100 year of calorimetry and electricity, just not to accept facts.
What is your problem ?

I imagine that you are under the dependence of theory as Thomas Kuhn explain, but nothing prevent LENR to exist.
only the incompetence of plasma and accelerator physicists in material science.

"I clearly recognized that the conventional nuclear scattering theory at positive energies cannot directly be applied to nuclear reactions involving deuterons bound in a metal, which is a negative-energy bound-state problem. Quantum scattering theory describing the Coulomb barrier problem is applicable to scattering experiments with nuclear beams.
When they were being criticized at the APS meeting, I was frustrated that I could not rebuke public criticisms by my nuclear theory colleagues, since I did not have an appropriate alternative theory, even though I realized that their theoretical arguments are premature." (Yeong E Kim. of Purdue University)

note that as Thomas Kuhn explain, Kim is not even aware that not having a theory is not an excuse to let people tell stupidities.
We still don't have a working theory of human swimming, yet we swim.

he have been innocented because it was a retroactive law, that is all.

He was acquitted of some convictions (the ones for creating toxic waste dumps) because those laws weren't in effect when he was (indisputably) dumping raw toxic waste in old refineries. Even though he didn't break any laws, he did create a number of toxic sites that have required at least $50 million to clean up.

The business fraud convictions were never overturned. At least, in the last few years that Rossi has been a celebrity, no one has ever published any credible information that he was.

There is plenty of credible information that the business fraud convictions were upheld.

If you have any actual evidence of the business fraud convictions being overturned, please post them. And, no, Rossi's vanity web site does not count as evidence.

"It is very unfortunate that Ericsson and Pomp resort to nasty and malicioius comments. To accuse colleagues with a long and distinguished series of hundreds of scientific articles, published in the most important international journals in physics, of being engaged in pseudo-science, is in fact a serious insult and beyond any reasonable level of decent academic behavior. Frankly speaking, I am ashamed of having colleagues at the University of Uppsala that do not restrain themselves from such base personal attacks."

First there were the astounding thermo-electric converters, which boasted efficiencies orders of magnitude greater than what is presently possible. They seemed like a near impossibility, and a fat chunk of US taxpayer dollars later, they may as well have been simply that - because when it came down to it, Rossi was unable to deliver on his promises. The taxpayers walked away empty handed and out-of-pocket.

Then came Petroldragon, another too-good-to-be-true energy scheme, wherein Rossi claimed to have discovered a process whereby various (apparently, some toxic) industrial wastes could be magically transmuted into safe, clean hydrocarbon fuels - as in petrol, one might gather from the name. This time around it was the Italian taxpayers who took it in the backside, and to the tune of many, many millions of lira. Turns out that Rossi was essentially just warehousing the waste, not "converting" it to anything other than the Italian version of a Super Fund Site.

But it didn't end there. This time, he pulled the biggest rabbit out of the hat yet - Cold Fusion it is! What a remarkable person he must be, to have invented not one, not two, but three world-changing energy technologies, and he's just settling into middle age!

And what does he do with it? Does he approach GE or Raytheon? Honeywell or Siemens? Philips? Nope, he spends the next couple of years tinkering around with it in a apparently rather chilly warehouse space, giving "demonstrations" of it to various and sundry individuals and attempting to attract capital. Incidentally, doesn't anyone find it a bit odd that during the colder months Rossi was often seen wearing a winter coat, indoors, while at work?

Do you mean to tell me that this man has a tabletop nuclear furnace that runs for pennies, yet he can't afford to heat his main workshop, seriously? Once again, this Free Energy seems curiously expensive and/or useless.

petroldragon patent was sold for big bucks, and this technology is used today to produce oil from waste.

thermoelectric converters he proposed have an efficiency that is proposed today, yet with industrialization problem like he met at DoD.

anyway, even if he was a fraudsters like the MIT team which was accused by Eugene Mallove to have manipulated the results to hide the success, it is possible to measure DC voltage, and triphase power, to measure thermal power (with IR can and thermocoupl), with less than 200% and 500% of error, when you have access to the socket, when you can move and inspect boxes, cables and touch the outside of the reactor...

even a magician cannot fool for sure a group of engineers who cannot freely touch and move the socket, the wires, and the reactor.

and it is the 3rd company with a 3rd party report about kW LENR reactor, not even talking of the hundreds of results on PdD at much more than 5sigma (if not 50sigma)... His claim are, modest .

So then, if the process works as Rossi claims it did, why did the local municipality get stuck with a multi-billion lira clean-up bill? Why didn't Rossi convert all that waste to salable product, and save himself the legal troubles, which included hefty fines and jail time?

Actually, Rossi abandoned his U.S. Patent by not paying the renewal fee. The only reason for someone to abandon a Patent is if it is totally worthless. But the "True Believers" continue to peddle their lies.

Patent # 6,051,110

Go to the U.S. Patent web site, and follow the "PEAR" link, which allows one to search the history of a Patent.

BTW, if this message gets posted, then it indicates that the site has banned my original posting persona. Pretty typical of a "True Believer" site: Simply ban anyone with unwanted facts (such as the true history of Rossi's patent, above).

BTW, if this message gets posted, then it indicates that the site has banned my original posting persona.

Well, no, it's charming that you think the only large non-corporate science site is in a vast personal conspiracy against you but we use Google's spam capture service - and that is based on how many people report you for spam on many sites, so if your comment doesn't show up right away, it's because it had a link and your name has been reported by lots of places. Your comment shows that is probably true.

I have no doubt that a group of devoted Rossi followers have been complaining of my posts being spam. That hardly qualifies as a "conspiracy", nor does it invalidate my claim that I was being "banned" from the site. (BTW, the only response to my attempts to post were a "service unavailable", which could mean anything. It would have been nice if the software actually indicated why the service was unavailable.)

However, I think the grandparent post shows that I'm not the one who's "spamming". Rossi's U.S. Patent really was abandoned for failure to pay the renewal fee. I just posted the information for anyone who cares to confirm it.

And yet, the "True Believers" are making totally baseless statements like: "petroldragon patent was sold for big bucks, and this technology is used today to produce oil from waste." (AlainCo) and "Patents for cold fusion are refused on a blanket basis. A form letter is sent to the applicant." (D R Lunsford), even though the Patent in question isn't a "cold fusion" patent and even though the Patent wasn't "refused", but was abandoned by Rossi.

Of what relevance here is a patent unless it is for a LENR device? It's just more sophistry, argumentum ad hominem. Rossi made a lot of money - millions - on efficient diesel engines. The facts of the Petrodragon case can easily be found but are irrelevant. In fact, Rossi himself is irrelevant. All that matters is that 300W in produced 900W out. There was no secret wire or DC offset. You people are out of arguments about the process itself. You cannot imagine how stupid you are going to feel in a few years. I actually feel sorry for you. And it's almost certain that you've never done a single creative thing in your life. Creative people don't act like this.

No, the wire was right out in the open. We are supposed to just accept that an "extra" wire, with no current flowing through it, just happened to be left attached, for no reason. The fact that the testers just accepted this shows that they were not serious about checking for fraud.

And, the DC offset argument demonstrates just how sloppy the testers were. There were much easier ways of cheating than applying a DC offset to the AC voltage, but it doesn't matter, because the test equipment the testers used could not detect a DC bias. So, when the testers claim that they checked for DC bias, they are wrong.

Here is Mats Lewan's report that the ammeter used by the testers is incapable of detecting DC voltages:

I was just addressing that the only way a comment is held for moderation is by Google's service. You aren't banned from the site, as your comments appearing shows, there isn't any mechanism to do that here. I know, because I built it.

It is rather sad that this revolutionary technology that is going to save the world only has for its spokespersons the same small cadre of angry, ignorant, illogical idol worshippers that frequents every relevant website. Of course, with the likes of Rossi as their savior, they are probably the right crew.

They fail to appreciate the heinous lacunae in the Levi report. They fail to acknowledge the mostly-substantive content of the Ericsson & Pomp critique, and focus instead on the "human relationship" aspects, as if blind to the scientific critiques in it.

Ironic that the E&P paper, as an unsolicited critique, is actually more comprehensive and insightful than the paper it's addressing. It's a thoughtful and well-reasoned piece of work, unlike the Levi et al. report, which is deficient in more areas than I would ever care to address in this forum.

To that point, excellent arguments have been made elsewhere, and at some surprising length. Any intrepid web searcher should be able to locate them, with a few carefully chosen keywords. If you feel like you're "on the fence" about Rossi, you'll be well served to do a bit of additional reading. Once you get past the muck, it's all pretty clear..

Such crapola. You sound more like a hack psychologist than a scientist. Perhaps you'd also like to talk about how the team "related" to their PCE-830 power meter? Did it make them happy to attach the clamp-ons?

A question please, I'm sure it has already been asked and answered beforehand, "If Mr. Rossi's E-cat can appear to glow white and generally, (overall) appear a cherry red. What is the probable energy level required to achieve this effect, what period of time would be required to deliver this appearance, why is it the wires supplying the energy to provide the observed effect do not melt (resistivity) and finally, would the use of energy to bring the "tube" up to incandescence not be noted within the applied instrumentation devices?.

If you want a real answer, go to the Vortex-L mailing list and subscribe. This place is filled with mosquitoes and gnats that make sane discussion impossible, the way they make summer camping impossible. You will get a very detailed explanation there.

"would the use of energy to bring the "tube" up to incandescence not be noted within the applied instrumentation devices?."

Not necessarily. The type of current sensor used is easily fooled. For example if you used one on most domestic appliances it would read ZERO because the Live and Neutral are in the same cable. It's necessary to put the sensor around the Live only. They claim to have done that but if there was a hidden "return" wire in the cable you could make it measure anything you want. They claim to have ruled out this particular trick but there are several other possibilities. For example the meter only responds to AC. If you delivered a mix of AC and DC only the AC part would be measured. It's unclear why the experiment needed a three phase (L1, L2, L3, N) supply which is normally only needed for appliances that draw much more power than they measured. Nor is there an explanation for why one Live wire appeared "dead" (connected but not used) yet measured 6V at 6A. The authors of the test report _might_ have done a good job but it doesn't appear so from the paper. They are free to improve their paper and explain any precautions they took to avoid to ensure they correctly measured the input power.

CWatters, thanks for the reply, but further to my question, and as I am not that technically minded, what would be the energy requirement to make the e-cat in Mr. Rossi's equipment appraisal (by the 11 or so scientists)to glow as it does, and could incandescence be achieved through the two wires as shown? I guess what I'm saying is a 2 bar radiator takes about 2000W to glow, that's a little bit of resistance wire, but the e-cat's outer shell is basically a chunk of solid metal and it's white hot in the photo. To me that's short circuit stuff. :)

PS I'm curious about the photo of the power meter that shows the device having a negative power factor. That normally means the load is feeding power back into the source. Same photo also show something strange about the mains frequency.

Thie discussion about the ecat development reminds me of the Wright Bros airplane development.
You will note below from Wilbur's biography that the Wright Brothers were laughed at, called fools and crackpots!

http://wright.nasa.gov/wilbur.htm
........................................................................................................................................
Their perseverance would again be put to the test, even after making history with the first ever heavier than air, manned, powered flight in 1903. Their achievement was doubted and undermined.

"Government bureaucrats thought they were crackpots; others thought that if two bicycle mechanics could build a successful airplane, they could do it themselves (ref). "

Eventually, with persistence, Wilbur and Orville were able to win over both the public and the bureaucrats.

Wilbur shocks the French with the flying machine.

In 1908 and 1909 Wilbur became quite the celebrity, wowing both audiences abroad and at home. He set records in Le Mans , France.

As one Frenchman put it: "I would have waited 10 ten times as long to see what I have seen today...Monsieur Wright has us all in his hands. (ref)"
.................................................................................................................................

If the critics had lived in this time, would they have attacked them too?
Should we embrace people who think differently, who are creative or attack them?

Yes quite. What amazes me is the modern phenomenon of the Internet mouth who has set up in his own mind as a past expert in things about which he understands nothing. This attitude is a plague on the discussion of physics ideas. Why would someone go online and pontificate about something he has no idea about, has not really studied, is completely ignorant of the literature, has no intuition for the main ideas and no context in which to place it? I have wracked my brain trying to understand the psychological state of the pseudo-savant. I think the Internet has given voice to those who would simply have been ignored before. And so every attempt at a sane discussion is poisoned by noise and deliberate ignorance.